


Night People

by Azure (Fancy_Ravenclaw)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Hand Jobs, M/M, Mcdonalds au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 01:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11933583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fancy_Ravenclaw/pseuds/Azure
Summary: Dan is put on the night shift at McDonalds with the new kid.





	Night People

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from the song/album by You Me At Six.

Dan came into work at a quarter to ten that evening. It was bound to be a long night, so he had downed four cups of coffee in a span of 70 minutes before coming. Maybe four had been a bit much, but least he felt like he could dance the tango for two hours straight rather than like he was ready to die dramatically in the gross kitchen of the McDonalds he worked at. 

The evening shifters were just cleaning up their things when he walked past the counter and into the breakroom. At the table in the corner was a boy he had not seen before. His manager was stood on the other side of the room, squinting at the roster on the corkboard. He turned around when he heard the door open and gave Dan a nod. Dan had worked here long enough to remember when his manager first started; when his eyes lit up every time he saw one of his employees come in. That was now a year and a half ago and boy, had this job sobered him up. 

“Hi Derek.” Dan said as he stood still just in front of the door, reluctant to go sit with the stranger at the table.

“Hi Dan.” Derek had gone back to staring at the corkboard. A few long, awkward seconds past during which no one said anything. Then finally the boy at the table spoke up.

“Hi, I‘m Phil.”

“I’m Dan.” Dan responded. He mustered up the courage to go over and sit opposite Phil. He sank down onto one of the hard plastic chairs and gave Phil what he hoped was a friendly smile.

Derek finally turned around and walked over to them too, “Dan, you’ll be showing Phil the ropes tonight. This is his second shift, so be nice to him.”

“As if I’d ever be mean.” Dan joked. Derek didn’t laugh but Phil shot him a grin. 

“I need you to properly mop the floors tonight and clean the toilets. That’s all. The day crew did most of the jobs as it was a very quiet day, so I’m expecting an even quieter night.”

“Fantastic.” Phil responded. Dan wasn’t quite sure if he was joking or not, but he laughed anyway.

Derek left the room and Dan and Phil were left alone. Dan uncomfortably fixed the collar of his shirt and coughed. “So,” He began, “First night shift?”

“Yeah.” Phil responded. He shifted in his seat. “I worked the morning shift yesterday. Hectic.”

“Don’t expect that tonight. We’ll be lucky if we see one person per hour.”

“Who the heck even comes into a McDonalds in the middle of the night on Monday?”

“Some drunks and the occasional student who forgot that no one goes out on Monday nights.”

Phil groaned.

\--

As they were walking out of the breakroom, Dan fastening the hideous apron behind his back, he thought of the things he’d have to show Phil. “So you know how the register works and how to make fries and stuff?”

“I know where the bags of fries are and how to throw them into the fryer, yes. Don’t make it sound more like a real restaurant than it is.”

“Already a good dose of cynicism towards your workplace. Good start.”

The evening shifters wished them good luck as they started leaving one by one, until only Dan and Phil were left behind the counter. The first hour or two were okay. A few lost people trickled in and had some late-night hamburgers. Phil got to sweep the floor after a bunch of tween girls on a sleepover accidentally knocked into a table and sent a tray full of fries flying, and Dan got to engage in his favourite activity: watching other people do the crappy jobs while he stood safely behind his cash register.

A couple came in just after midnight, and by the time they left no one new had come in. “It’s started.” Dan announced. He wiped some imaginary dirt of the counter and leaned over, elbows on the counter and head in his hands. “Getting paid for doing nothing is worse than getting paid for actually working at McDonalds.”

“Derek did give us jobs to do.” Phil offered.

“No, my young friend, the trick is to leave the jobs you have been given until the moment you almost can’t stand the boredom anymore. If you do the jobs now you’ll just get bored again way too soon and spend more time than necessary in extreme agony.”

“Great, so now what?”

“Now we wait.” Dan said.

“Wait for what?”

“We will know that when it happens.”

Phil sighed and sat down at one of the tables. 

“My buddy Ben and I like to play a game called ‘Guess the Stain’. Shall I introduce you?”

Phil raised his eyebrows, but nodded. Dan took him to the playroom for children, rummaged through the ball pit until he found what he was looking for, and then picked up a ball. It had a brownish stain on it that covered about half the surface. Phil pulled a face and took a step back. “Don’t touch that! Are you crazy?”

“No, I’m keeping us occupied so we don’t go crazy. Now what do you think this stain is?”

“It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.”

“Try harder.”

“God, chicken nugget sauce maybe?”

“Good one. Ben thought maybe poop, my money was on years of skin cells mushed together.” He dropped the ball and pointed to the ceiling. “Now what about that one?”

Phil looked at the stain on the white ceiling boards and shrugged, “Looks like a simple leakage.”

“See, we thought so too, until Derek told us that there’s apparently been a family of weasels living in the roof for the past five years. Now we think it might be weasel pee.”

“This is a restaurant!” 

“You just said at the start of our shift not to call McDonalds a restaurant.”

“God, you know what I mean.”

1AM  
Dan and Phil were playing dodgeball with the ball pit balls. It had taken Phil exactly 38 minutes of boredom to get over his disgust of the balls and get desperate enough to play a game with them. At ten past one a lone man walked into the restaurant. Dan peeked his head out of the playroom and announced: “We are back in business!” He hurried to the counter to help the customer. Unfortunately, the man only ordered a milkshake – which the boys argued over who could make it - and then left. They were alone again.

Phil swept the floor for a few minutes while Dan unnecessarily cleaned the milkshake machine. “The trick to a truly good sweep is moving all the furniture out of the way.” Phil said as he did the exact opposite.

“A good sweep.” Dan repeated. He tossed the dishtowel into the laundry bin and motioned Phil back into the playroom for another round of dodgeball.

2AM  
Phil got stuck on the slide in the playroom. Four minutes into trying to free him, a customer came in and Dan laughed heartily before telling Phil to “stay strong” and running off. Phil stayed put in the slide for the ten minutes it took Dan to handle the customer and get the guy his Big Mac and get back into the playroom.

“Save me.” Phil’s muffled voice came through the plastic slide. Dan had to try his best not to start laughing.

“Don’t worry, my brave friend, I will get you out of there. I will pour some frying oil down to make it all more slippery. You’ll be down in no time.”

“Don’t you dare!” Phil shouted. A weak threat coming from someone who was stuck in a children’s slide.

“I’ll slide in too and push you out.” Dan then said. He climbed up on the structure and into the slide. His torso wasn’t even inside the slide yet when his feet already hit Phil’s shoulders.

“Push!” 

Dan was in hysterics again. “I’m giving birth!” He cried.

“Come on, you buffoon!” 

Dan finally started pushing down with his feet and felt Phil go further and further down. He managed to grab a hold of the outer rim of the slide just in time to prevent himself from falling down too. Phil scrambled to his feet down on the floor and gave Dan a thumbs up.

“No more playing in the slide.” Dan said.

A customer came in.

3AM  
“I think if aliens exist, they would never contact us, you know.”

Dan was lying on his back on the counter. Phil was sat beside his head, drinking a smoothie.

“Yeah, I mean we’re only messing everything up. Why would they want to alert us to the existence of their perfectly good planet so we could come over and ruin that one too?” Phil responded.

Dan nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s a bad idea indeed. But would they be intelligent enough to have devices to communicate with?”

“I think it’s more a question of ‘do they have the same type of communication materials as we do’. We keep scorching outer space with our machines that detect radio waves and stuff, but we never stop to think that maybe aliens don’t even use radio waves.” Phil put his empty smoothie cup down and leaned back a little.

“Excellent point. However, I think we would’ve found a different way to communicate by now too, if there was one.”

“Why would we? This one works just fine for us. Plus, we don’t have the same kind of technology.” As he thought about it, Phil moved his hand and instead of a counter to lean on found Dan’s head. His subconscious didn’t register it properly and before he realised what he was doing he’d been playing with Dan’s hair for ten seconds. Dan hadn’t even said anything about it.

“Do you think aliens have internet?” He asked.

Phil laughed, “Maybe a form of it. Probably not in the same way we do. I mean, our internet is not exactly what the makers intended it to be, I don’t think.” He kept his hand in Dan’s hair.

“True, true. Aliens probably don’t have a dark web.” 

The thought of an Alien dark web had them speculating for a good half an hour before another two customers finally strolled in and both ordered – in drunk slurred speech – a 20 piece of chicken nuggets with extra sauce.

4AM  
Dan had started cleaning the toilets, allowing Phil to take the slightly less unpleasant job of mopping the floors. They’d started singing High School Musical twenty minutes ago but were still not through all the songs they knew.

Everything seemed surreal. Like the feeling you get when you’re in school on a Saturday or in a shop after closing time. Dan was used to this feeling by now; he’d worked enough night shifts in his time. Phil was acting like he was Cinderella in a poor remake of the movie, so either his mind had been taken over by the surreality of being in a McDonalds in the middle of the night, or the exhaustion had started kicking in. Dan figured probably the latter.

When he finished cleaning the toilets and had dumped the cleaning supplies back in the closet, he washed his hands thoroughly and sat on a random table. Phil was almost done mopping the floor and everything looked wet and shiny.

As he went to put the mop away, Phil announced, “I literally feel like if I closed my eyes right now I would fall asleep just standing up.”

“Ah, my sleepiness usually kicks in during the last hour. You’re a bit earlier, but it’s okay. You’re just a beginner.”

They sat on the counter together and looked at the door. These were the most quiet hours; people would start coming in again just before six, so the people on morning shifts could get their McCoffee and hashbrowns before work.

Phil rubbed his eyes and murmured, “I don’t know if I’m high on a lack of sleep, but I really want to kiss you right now.”

That had Dan searching desperately for words for a few seconds. “You’re probably really sleep drunk.” 

“Yeah, probably.” Phil lay down on his back and closed his eyes. He didn’t even seem to realise how seriously Dan was taking his words.

5AM  
Dan had just served the first early customer of the morning rush. She had told Dan she was a garbage collector and her shift started at five thirty. Dan wished her a sincere good luck as he handed her her coffee.

Phil was in the kitchen somewhere, doing God knew what. Possibly sleeping. When Dan was sure no other customers would come in for at least a few minutes, he went to go check up on his co-worker. He found Phil drinking some coffee by the fridges, his eyes much wider than they’d been before.

“Woken up a little?” 

“I just kind of feel like I’m high on adrenaline now.” Phil responded.

Dan was still thinking about what Phil had said earlier and he couldn’t help but glance at Phil’s lips. He had to admit he had been thinking about it too. When Phil was playing with his hair as they lay on the counter and when they were singing High School Musical together. He’d felt warm and fuzzy inside and the feeling kind of scared him. He’d only ever felt this way about a girl before. So why hadn’t he been taken aback when Phil said he wanted to kiss him? Surely that would’ve been a normal reaction. But he hadn’t been. Rather, he’d considered actually kissing him for a second before dismissing the thought and figuring Phil was too tired to be held accountable for his words.

Now that Phil seemed awake and sobered up again, Dan wasn’t sure if he would still want to kiss him. Maybe he didn’t even remember saying it. But he could see that Phil did remember in the way he was looking at him.

“You’re thinking about it too, aren’t you?” Phil asked, startling Dan.

He couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what the other was talking about, so he just nodded.

“You said the rush starts just before six, right?”

“Yeah.” 

“Well, I’d say we have about twenty minutes, and I guess we’d better make the most of it.”

Dan wasn’t sure what he meant by that for a moment, until Phil put down his coffee cup and bridged the distance between them. He stepped much closer than would be platonically acceptable, and that was really the only warning Dan got before Phil pressed their lips together.

Phil tasted like coffee and his shirt was soft when Dan clutched it in his fist. They were both a bit drowsy and slow from the lack of sleep, which made the kiss a bit odd but not in a bad way. It was just much slower than Dan would’ve usually done.

Phil’s hands were going through his hair and then down his back, stopping just before Dan’s butt. He hooked his fingers behind the belt. Dan tensed up and caught himself hoping he would go further, knowing he would never have the courage to initiate it himself.

And then finally, after what felt like hours, Phil moved his hands again. This time to the front of Dan’s jeans, where he once again hooked his thumbs behind the belt. Dan clutched Phil’s shirt tighter and kissed him harder, hoping it would convey his message of ‘please continue’. It did. Phil got to undoing Dan’s belt, breaking the kiss to look at him to make sure it was okay. Dan just pulled him back into him.

“Wait.” Phil said, stepping away again. Dan stopped himself from groaning impatiently. “We can’t do this here. That’s actually disgusting.”

Dan felt like he’d awoken from a haze as he realised where he was. Right. The McDonalds kitchen.

Phil went to check if there were any customers waiting for them at the counter – there weren’t- and then they went into the breakroom, which was the least bad place they could think of. They went into the bathroom and locked the door.

Dan had Phil against the wall within a second of the lock clicking into place, and Phil’s hands were back on his belt, making quick work of it now. He fumbled with the button of Dan’s jeans for a moment before Dan pushed his hands out of the way and undid them himself, pulling them down quickly. 

Phil’s hands were on him, palming him through his pants. Dan’s breath got caught in his throat and came out as a soft moan instead. His own hands were in Phil’s soft black hair, that was getting sweatier by the second.

The changed positions. Dan against the wall and Phil keeping him in place. Their heads were resting against each other, their breaths coming out in short bursts and colliding in the small space between them. They had given up on kissing as neither of them could keep a steady rhythm going like this.

Dan’s underwear was pulled down and Dan let out a desperate sound as Phil’s hand touched his bare skin. He explored Dan for a minute or two, seeing what the other responded well to, which was pretty much everything as long as he was touching him, before he started moving at a steady rhythm. Dan’s knees buckled but he kept himself standing. He was holding on to Phil’s shoulders now, as if they were the only thing holding him up, and maybe they were.

Just as Dan started getting close to coming, a bell rang. Both of them stopped dead in their tracks and weren’t sure what the sound was for a moment, until Phil whispered under his breath, “Customer.”

“Fuck.” Dan responded. He pulled up his pants and attempted to fix his hair a little, while Phil furiously washed his hands with way too much soap.

“Do I look presentable?” Dan asked, still out of breath.

“Not really, but go. They don’t want me touching their food with these hands right now.”

“Valid point.” Dan quickly put his hands under the tap to wash off the sweat and then dashed out of the bathroom, through the breakroom, and into the restaurant. “Hello, sorry for the wait, how can I help you?” He put on his best smile, but he knew he looked exactly how he felt: his face red and his hair sweaty and ruffled.

“Can I just have a muffin and a coffee?” Fortunately it was only one woman. There was no line and the rest of the restaurant was still empty. Dan quickly fixed her food for her, and he didn’t even wait till the door had closed behind her before he went back into the breakroom. 

“That was a wild ride.” Phil grinned at him. He was done washing his hands and was now standing in front of the mirror, trying to save what was left of hair by putting water in it.

Dan’s hair had already gotten a bit curly from the sweat, and he knew that putting in more water would only make it curlier. He washed his face and tried to get his hair back in order with dry hands.

“So,” He said carefully, “What was that?”

Phil lost a bit of his confidence when he said that. His face fell. “You regret it?”

“No, definitely not. It’s more of a ‘what does this mean’.” Dan said. 

Phil nodded, relieved. “I don’t really care about what it means. All I know is that I would really like to finish it.”

“Well,” Dan glanced at his watch, “I don’t know about you, but I’m suddenly not very tired anymore, our shift is over in twelve minutes, and my parents aren’t home.”

Phil ran a last hand through his hair and then turned to the other, “I can work with that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! If there's anything you'd like me to write, send me a prompt on my Tumblr Daniactuallysnuffledthatpopcorn or leave a comment! :)


End file.
